This week’s analysis of the ASIC Financial Adviser Register (FAR), shows an decrease of (-3) Adviser Roles moving from 19,349 to 19,346

The number of actual Advisers decreased by (-5) from 19,070 to 19,065

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(See Dashboard 17 for more information to the variation between Adviser Roles and Actual Advisers)

Key Movements This Week:

• 45 Appointments, (-48) Resignations - Net Change in roles of (-3)*.

• 38 Licensee Owners had net gains for 47 roles

• 39 Licensee Owners had net losses for (-50) roles

• 2 Provisional Advisers appointed. This in effect means that 7 experienced advisers dropped off the ASIC FAR. The (-5) loss would have been (-7) if not for the new Provisional Advisers.

*The main reason for the this week’s variance between adviser roles and actual advisers was due to Evans And Partners (Evans Dixon) appointing 3 advisers that are also current at Dixon Advisory which is owned by Evans Dixon.

Growth This Week
Heading the growth this week at the licensee owner level (Dashboard 1B) was new licensee ‘Carpeta’ trading as Cognitive Financial Partners with 3 advisers moving away from Sky Alliance Markets. Evans Dixon is showing growth of 3 roles, as stated above, these are in effect 3 duplications of existing advisers that are now working under two licensees held by Evans Dixon.

5 licensees had net growth of 2 each, including new licensees S & R Financial services (Rabbitt and Partners) and Dawson & Partners, both moving away from Lonsdale. Another new licensee, Future Private Wealth (Capital Wealth Management) commenced with 2 advisers moving away from Fortnum. A further 31 licensee owners had net growth of 1 role each.

6 new licensees commenced for 9 advisers.

Losses This Week
AMP Group and Highfield Group both had net losses of (-4). AMP losing 2 advisers from AMP Financial Planning and 1 each from Charter and Ipac. Highfield losing 3 advisers from Insight Investment Services and 1 from Ausure. Fortnum down (-3), followed by three groups down (-2) including IOOF and Synchron. A further 33 licensee owners had net losses of (-1) each.

Three licensees closed for a total of (-3) advisers. All with limited advice licences. .

Year To Date Data
Year to date we see Centrepoint mover slightly further ahead of Oreana in terms of growth for licensee owners with more than 50 advisers. Centrepoint now have growth of 21 advisers, followed by Oreana at 19 and Count Financial at 12. These are the only three groups with double digit growth.

At the other end of the table, IOOF Group have lost (-377) roles followed by AMP at (-256) and NTAA at (-119).

For 2021, Small Is The New Big For Financial Adviser Growth
This year is showing adviser losses across all peer groups - see dashboard 3. The one area that needs closer scrutiny is the ‘self-licensed’ model. For this exercise, we will define self-licensed as a licence with less than 20 advisers and is not associated with a larger group. We define new licensees as licensees starting the year with zero advisers. Closed licensees are licensees that now have zero advisers after starting the year with at least 1 adviser and not associated to a larger group.

Table 1 below shows that this cohort saw 100 new licensees for net change in advisers roles of +250. Within the cohort, the Financial Planning peer group (holistic advice) represented the largest share with 77 new licensees and +175 adviser roles.

Table 2 shows that for the same period we had many more licensees close at 142 with a total of -258 adviser roles lost. Closer analysis shows that the largest peer group for losses was Accounting - Limited Advice (provide predominately SMSF advice only). This peer group lost 94 licensees for (-156) roles. Note: this peer group had zero growth for 2021 hence now shown in Table 1.

After deducting losses from gains, the Financial Planning peer group had net growth of 52 licensees (77 - 25) and +124 adviser roles (175 - 51).

To put the 124 roles into perspective., combined they would be the 32nd largest licensee. Compared to larger licensee owners with more than 50 Advisers, only 14 in this cohort have had growth for a total of 86 roles. So for 2021, small is the new big for financial planner growth.

We keep details of all licensee movements and have most contact details for each licensee. We can also do a much deeper analysis. For example, by going further back in time and providing data as to which licensees and advisers have passed the FASEA Exam.

Have a great week - any questions, please call or email using the contact details